Blood in the Water

Thompson gives a brief biography of Detroit attorney Ernest Goodman. He was a man who throughout his legal career, which began in the 1930s, used the law to fight for social justice. In 1937 he formed the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the first racially integrated bar association. In 1974, on the verge of retirement, he was called to defend an Attica prisoner.

After the indictments served by Simonetti, the prisoners now required a significant defense effort. This was organized at first through the Attica Defense Committee (ADC), which then, by September 1973, became the Attica Brothers Legal Defense (ABLD). It brought together lawyers and progressive legal aid and civil rights groups, with Don Jelinek as official director.

The first task of the ABLD was to raise funds. This was especially important given the four-and-a-half million dollars released for the prosecution and the fact that the group had been denied access to the three-quarters-of-a-million dollars allocated by the state for the defense. Thus, the ABLD engaged in fund raising via “leaflettings, pamphleteering, buying pamphlets, buttons, the holding of bake and cake sales” (316). Moreover, the ABLD succeeded in moving the location of the trial from Attica to Buffalo in Erie County, which was more racially diverse and had a major university.